Writeback One-day strike a 'criminal

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Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28. Middle Lane, London N8. I WOULD like to express support for Andy Dixon's recent comments [Letters, SO 78] on the inadequacy of calling for one-day general strikes.

As comrade Dixon points out in his letter, a general strike is 'one of the most powerful weapons" which the class possesses. A general strike situation by its very nature poses the question of power in society, given the fact that whole areas of the administration of society are taken out of the hands of the bourgeoisie and placed under working class control.

Essential services, such as electricity for hospitals etc., would be organised by the working class, for example; similarly, it would be pickets, not management and their factory police, who decided what and who entered and left workplaces. And the kind of mass picketing occurring during a general strike would make the functioning of bourgeois 'law and order' [such as Tebbit's anti-union laws] inoperable.

Revolutionaries relate to such a situation by seeking to maintain — and extend the inroads made into capitalist rule by the striking working class. Calling for a one-day general strike is to do the opposite: it is to set limits in advance potential of a strike.

In fact, it is even worse: it is to reject in advance any attempt to develop the possibilities of a general strike. [Or else it is dishonest: call for a one-day general strike because this sounds more 'realistic' but once they're out, then argue to slay out indefin¡tely].

Relaxing

What threat does a one-day general strike pose to the bourgeoisie? None at, all. They can spend the day relaxing, then go back to the Stock Exchange, the banks, etc. the next day; knowing that everything is as it was before.

And calling for a general strike, of any kind, in relation to the third reading of Tebbit's Bill in Parliament is particularly useless. The fact that some MPs will go out through one door at the division, and others through another door, is utterly irrelevant to the working class. But that is all that is involved in the third reading of the Bill.

Impact

What will make an impact on the working class, however, is the first occasion on which an attthe empt is made to actually use the Act. Such an event - not MPs pollering about in Parliament - is the kind of spark that could unleash a general strike:

But the reply to comrade Dixon's letter fails to take up such points. Instead of looking at the question of one-day general strikes as wrong in principle. the reply merely looks at the question from a 'tactical' point of view: the working class is demoralised, there's not been any campaigning about the Bill, so an all out general strike isn't on. What's needed are one-day general strikes to mobilise the class etc. etc.

The reply is right about the successes hitherto of the Tories anti working class offensive, the donothing attitude of the TUC, etc. But this in no way validates the call for one-day general strikes as opposed to an all-out general strike.

To say it is wrong to call right now, this very minute, for an immediate indefinite general strike is one thing; but to argue that therefore the demand which should be raised is for a one-day general strike is irrational, since it fails to consider how pernicious such a demand for a limited general strike is by its very nature.

Instead of raising this criminal demand, what we should argue for is an indefinite general strike on the first occasion that the Tories try to put Tebbit's Bill into operation.

STAN CROOKE, Glasgow.

REPLY: Stan Crooke describes very clearly what happens in a full general strike, and shows why during a general strike any proposals by the reformists or the bourgeoisie that would cut across the logical growth and development of the struggle would fought tooth and nail by serious socialists.

But why is it unprincipl ed for the movement to flex its muscles in a limited, set way, with warning actions like a one-day general strike?

Stan Crooke surely will support demonstrations as limited actions against Tebbit. But would he support strike action to back up the lobby of Parliament on April 29, for example? Or would he insist that all demonstrations must be at weekend for fear of breaking the taboo on one-day Such a mobilising, selfdiscovering action might well be the work of limited militant sections of the labour movement. The stoppages on May • 1 1969 were of that sort. They nevertheless established the rank